


If You Can Find It

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: Lost in Space (TV 2018), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Characters, Crossover, Fake Marriage, Gen, Hot Dads In Space, M/M, Parenthood, Staggered Timeline, Survival, pre-Maleigh, until it's real!, which is all of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 04:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14417625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: They trust each other; they know each other well, all the way back to the air force days. They speak to the kids with a unified voice. Eleven years ago Stacker asked Herc for parenting advice, and it was all Herc could do not to laugh. And when Stacker got out, went into contract work and then administration, Chuck stayed with the Pentecosts a couple times while Herc was on deployment. Herc came back to find a trio of adolescents with the survival skills of a Gary Paulsen book and most of a Ph.D between them, staggeringly efficient at whatever they could agree to accomplish. Stacker never needed Herc’s parenting advice.





	If You Can Find It

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched Netflix's Lost In Space reboot, this is going to read like gibberish. I finished season one about a day and a half ago, and now here we are, utterly un-betaed. In these situations, one must strike while the image of Herc Hansen stabbing space eels is fresh. 
> 
> Title from Nick Cave's "Wonderful Life." Dominika's name was headcanoned by shmoo92. I'm on the Tumblrs, and always accepting prompts for any of the characters included in this fic, at @hauntedfalcon.

When Mako Mori closes her eyes, she sees frost tracing over her helmet and blue ice advancing. Her muscles freeze and her breath grows short, remembering the claustrophobia, the terrible stillness, the oxygen running out. 

Then she had her hand outstretched for the surface; now she doubles over, seeks someplace to huddle until it passes. 

How she hates being useless, here of all places. But this is fresh trauma and it won’t be rushed. Three hands closed over hers, then, in a tiny hole in the ice burned by magnesium. She was so grateful for them. She wanted to speak, to tell her father--but the words wouldn’t come. She wished her brother was there, and was glad he wasn’t, on balance. 

At the end she felt unexpectedly bitter. Death was supposed to mean something, supposed to make a difference, and in eighteen years she survived so much, only to be there and die pointlessly.

They let go, and she panicked anew, and then… warmth, and light, and Mako looked up through the melting ice at a towering metal shape in blue and gold, and her family pulled her free and took off her helmet and turned as one to look at the amber heat of burning plasma in the creature’s palms. (Remembering that warmth now, she begins to recover.) 

Her eleven-year-old brother stepped out of the robot’s shadow and told them, “His name is Danger.” 

\- - - 

It’s been a long and ugly day, and everything on this planet wants to kill them, so it’s kind of like being back in Australia, except worse. 

Chuck says as much while he consults the refrigerator for anything other than protein shakes. His old man replies with some cliche about how they all made sacrifices to get here, and Chuck shuts the fridge, looks him in the eye, and lays the sarcasm on thick. “We sure did.”

“I know it was hard leaving Max,” Herc begins, but this isn’t about that. 

“You can lie to yourself if you want,” Chuck snaps, “but don’t expect me to believe you did all this for me.” That business in the engine bay earlier today, the stupid move with the fuel line and the eels, that was for Chuck. But he doesn’t want to talk about that yet. 

“Of course I did,” says Herc, puzzlement on his face. “Why else—“ 

“You wanted in Stacker’s pants, and that’s what you got.” 

Herc’s astonishment turns steely. He gets up and leaves the hub without another word. 

Maybe, just this once, Chuck missed the mark. 

\- - - 

They’re not really married. 

Well, they are. There was a ceremony, witnesses, a signed certificate. They  _ got _ married, and for the purposes of the Alpha Centauri colonist program they are absolutely husbands, but it’s not exactly how Herc would define a marriage. 

They trust each other; they know each other well, all the way back to the air force days. They speak to the kids with a unified voice. Eleven years ago Stacker asked Herc for parenting advice, and it was all Herc could do not to laugh. And when Stacker got out, went into contract work and then administration, Chuck stayed with the Pentecosts a couple times while Herc was on deployment. Herc came back to find a trio of adolescents with the survival skills of a Gary Paulsen book and most of a Ph.D between them, staggeringly efficient at whatever they could agree to accomplish. Stacker never needed Herc’s parenting advice. 

It was after that last deployment that the topic came up. He and Stacker went to the covered porch to have a beer, watched the ash-filled evening sky beyond the security fence. “Thanks again for looking after my boy,” Herc said. 

“Anytime,” Stacker replied. 

Herc knew how Chuck loved to push buttons, and he surely found a few of Stacker’s in the last six months. “I mean it,” he said. “You’ve got the patience of a saint.” 

“He’s his father’s son,” Stacker said, and clinked his bottle against Herc’s. 

Half a beer later, Stacker said, “Word crossed my desk this morning:  _ Eureka _ is coming back around for a new batch of colonists. Launch is two years away. Could be a shot at getting out of here.” 

Herc looked up from Stacker’s hands. He’d checked into the program, but it seemed a waste of a Jaeger bigger than his flat, just for two people. He met Stacker’s gaze and waited for what he would say next. 

“Kids get along well. Well enough, anyway.” 

Herc took a careful breath. “You brought this up to Dominika first, yeah?” 

“‘Course.” Stacker swigged his beer, swallowed. “She wants to stay. Too many stories to tell here, still. Jake knows she won’t be coming along.” 

Which meant Mako knew what he was considering, because Stacker made every decision that affected his family a family decision. And Chuck would have overheard, which explained his above-average sullenness at dinner. “If I’m gonna go, there’s no one I’d rather go with,” Herc said. 

“Shall we put it to a vote?” said Stacker, and Herc nodded, and they went inside. 

It came down to pros and cons. “All my friends are going,” Chuck submitted as a pro, and Herc knew he had more friends than that, but under the circumstances it counted as a jab. Mako and Jake didn’t rise to it. “How do we even know we’ll all get assigned to the same Jaeger, though? You gonna use your rank and pull some strings, Marshal?” 

Stacker breathed in once, which Herc suspected was a tell, before answering. “Might not need to.” 

“Families get priority,” Jake said slowly. 

Mako sat up straighter. “And so do complementary skillsets. So if we bring both…” 

“But they’d have to go through with it before submitting the application,” Jake cut back in, “or it’ll be flagged as fraudulent.” 

“Go through with what?” Herc said, even as Chuck made a face. Honestly, the kids made him feel about a million years old and fifty steps behind. 

Mako and Jake looked to Stacker. Stacker looked to Herc. “It’d be easier if we were married,” he said. 

And Herc, having never been proposed to, had no idea what to say to that. 

A week later they were at the registry office, and a week after that Jake carried a little box that had Stacker’s academy ring and a plain tungsten band side by side in it, and Herc had nerves the likes of which he wouldn’t have imagined he’d ever feel again. Five and a half months after that they submitted an application for five colonists, and eighteen months after that they loaded their remaining worldly possessions onto their very own Jaeger. Which promptly fell out of the sky and crashed on a scenic hell world. 

Now, hours after the kids went to bed, in the hub with his feet up and a bottle of Tendo’s smuggled whiskey, he thinks on Chuck’s accusation. Herc tries to be honest with himself, as a rule; he has long since run out of reasons not to be, burned through pride and vanity both. He has loved Stacker Pentecost since Ange was still alive. He resolved, then and since, that it was not to be, and contented himself with companionship. He has plainly not managed to hide a damn thing from his son, except maybe one thing. 

He has shared Stacker’s bed for two years and never once--

Stacker’s hand settles on his shoulder. “Long day,” he greets. 

Herc nods silently and offers the bottle, which Stacker takes and swigs from directly. “Sometimes,” he sighs as he drops into the next seat, “I wonder what Tams would do in my place.” 

“Today?” Herc says, and Stacker nods, eyes on the tabletop. “She would have fed all those nasties back to the engine, blasted out of here, and given the whole planet two fingers on the way.” 

Stacker chuckles, a rich sound that Herc adores. It fades too quickly. “Do you think, if we can’t get to Alpha Centauri, we could make a life here?” 

The idea makes him so very tired. “We can make a life anywhere.” 

Stacker nods again. “I’m going to bed,” he says. “You mind showering again before you do too? You still smell like methane.” 

Herc flips him off and Stacker grins. “Hey, Stacker.” He turns back on his way out of the hub. Herc says, without malice, “This is a shit honeymoon.” 

“Paris next time,” Stacker promises, and goes. 

Forty-five minutes and nearly a whole bar of soap later, Herc… smells like methane. He collapses onto the mattress with Stacker’s warmth like the sun at his back, and Stacker rumbles something unintelligible, and maybe this is a sham and maybe Herc was put on Earth, and subsequently on this awful place, to do nothing but suffer, but the truth is he would gladly make a life anywhere Stacker Pentecost wants to go. 

\- - - 

Jake feels Danger watching him. Writing with red ochre clay is tricky, but he’s managed to scrawl  _ The Pentecosts were here _ on the cave wall. He presses his hand underneath it, and then turns to his sister and brother. 

“Dad didn’t change his name,” Chuck protests. 

“Oh, come off it,” Jake says. He has more to say, but Mako walks over decisively and smears the clay on her hand, then transfers it to the cave wall, and then she and Jake both lift their chins at Chuck. Mako didn’t change her name either, when Stacker adopted her. A Pentecost is a Pentecost, and Pentecosts stick together. 

Chuck sighs. “Whatever.” He leaves his handprint beside theirs. 

That night, with Danger as sentinel, they doze on the cool stone floor. Jake dreams in fits and starts of flowers that bloom on command, of swirling lights in the vastness of space, of moths and flames and cave walls that show only shadows. 

He wakes, and Danger is watching him, and Jake can’t bring himself to meet the robot’s unfathomable gaze. There is a fourth mark under the message on the wall, spindly and six-fingered. Jake swallows around a lump. He has to be responsible now. 

They dust themselves off and prepare to set out for the Jaeger. “I’ll come back and see you whenever I can, but you have to stay here.” Danger takes a step when Jake starts to walk away. Of course he does. “ _ No _ . You have to stay.” Jake stands straight, shoulders square, and Danger copies him. “Like that,” Jake says, and backs away to where Mako and Chuck wait at the mouth of the cave. Danger tracks him, lights swirling faster, but doesn’t move this time. The geode in Jake’s pocket weighs his every step. 

Mako and Chuck let Jake walk ahead of them, and he’s glad, because he doesn’t stop crying until they get back to the Jaeger. 

Later, he takes a break from riding the maintenance armature around the garage, and Chuck asks him what’s wrong. “I just wish we didn’t have to keep sacrificing things,” Jake says. 

Chuck joins him on a crate. “Yeah, good luck, Squirt. Look who raised us. What else are we supposed to do? Even when we don’t have to be martyrs about something, we’ll find a way. It’s your birthright.” 

“Thanks, I hate it.” Jake isn’t sure whether it’s easier to lose everything all at once, or a little at a time, but there’s probably always something else to lose. 

“So do I,” Chuck says, and for a while they sit in silence. 

\- - - 

Stacker doesn’t remember the suit being so tight. 

Herc seals him into it carefully, gently, his hands sure, muscles tense in his freckled shoulders. Stacker is woozy from too much CO2, not thinking clearly, which may be why he agreed to this in the first place. The suit is tight, and it’s probably Herc’s suit; Stacker didn’t check the chestplate. 

Herc is putting Stacker in his own bloody suit and then he is going to push him through the Chariot’s hatch and the tar beyond it, and then Herc is going to suffocate and die miserably and Stacker is going to get their kids the hell away from this planet and he’s sure Chuck will never forgive him and Mako probably won’t either. She’s more like Herc than any of them really, and many’s the time Stacker went down to the garage and found them side by side on the treadmills, silently matching pace. But this is the only way. 

Herc says there’s a difference between sacrificing himself and saving Stacker’s life, and Stacker wants to believe that there is, but he’s too angry to really consider the idea. That’s what this place does: push people into impossible places and force them into horrible decisions, calls that have to be made by one person even though they affect everyone. Every problem has a solution, even if the solution is that one of them dies. It’s the only--

“Stacker.” Herc is holding the helmet now, hesitating, knuckles white around the rim. Stacker should have stayed later in the hub that night Herc landed them so magnificently on the plateau, should have finished the bottle with Herc, talked more about the life they wanted to build. He should have slept closer in their bed every night, should have nested his hips against Herc’s, if Herc would have him. “Stacker, I…” 

Stacker kisses him. Herc drops the helmet and grabs Stacker’s collar and holds on, sighing out in  _ such _ relief even as Stacker holds his breath, the better to make this last, until Stacker feels like he’s floating and he sees stars, and he comes away gasping, and enlightened. “There’s another way.” 

They emerge from the opening Herc cuts in the mylar tunnel, filthy and sodden and laughing two octaves above their register. “Kissing me was that good, huh?” Herc says as his voice returns to normal. 

Good enough to spark an epiphany. Good enough that he never wants to stop. Stacker turns on his side to put his hand on Herc’s cheek. “Should’ve done it years ago,” he says. 

They’re late getting back to the Jaeger. They stop at a stream to wash up and, well, things go from there.

Neither one of them can keep from grinning when they get home, so giddy that at first they don’t notice the robot is gone. In the hub, the kids regard them, and then Chuck gives Mako a pointed look, and she steps out and returns a moment later with three Oreos, which he accepts smugly and twists apart to eat the filling first. 

\- - - 

On the way back from the fuel run, they lose Yancy Becket. 

Mako’s hands shake and nothing Tendo says can change the fact that she told that man  _ not today _ and it was a lie. Nothing can change the fact that he died for nothing. 

He had a brother. Much as Mako wishes she could go home and curl up on her bunk and sleep for eighty years, she has a duty. 

“I can do that, Miss Mori,” says Doctor Gottlieb. “As the colony’s representative, I ought to be the one--” 

“Please let me know how Vanessa’s wounds are healing,” Mako says, and starts walking toward the Beckets’ Jaeger. Gottlieb doesn’t join her, and Mako doesn’t look back. A moment later, Tendo drives up and silently raises the Chariot’s canopy, and Mako gets in. 

The Beckets crashed near a high ridge, and Mako has to make the last part of the trip on foot. The sun is amber on the horizon by the time she finds Yancy’s younger brother. He sits at the top of the ridge looking out at the valley. Someone radioed him a few hours ago, but he deserves to hear this in person from her as well. To have someone to blame. 

He looks up sharply when she approaches. “I apologize for disturbing you, Mr. Becket,” she says. 

He shakes his head and gestures her closer. Mako sits beside him. “They said he fell,” he says.  

She nods. Raleigh Becket lets out a breath and stays silent for a long time. 

“When we had the opportunity to leave,” he says at last, “my sister stayed behind. Said there was too much to fix on Earth. I’m starting to wonder if she had the right idea. But in situations like this you make decisions, and you have to live with the consequences. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Back at the edge of the steam field, Gottlieb drew Mako aside and told her that if she lifted the tank, she would be trading the lives of sixty-two other colonists for one. She made the call. Tendo drove the Chariot. Yancy died for nothing.

They turn as one at a sound behind them. Back down the ridge, Tendo has unloaded Yancy’s body and a pair of shovels.

Two hours later Mako is sore from digging, sorer still from carrying twenty-eight stones to cover the grave, but the work felt strangely cleansing. Tendo opens a bottle, and Raleigh pours the first glass over the stones. 

The next three glasses are for them. Mako isn’t sure she’ll ever become accustomed to the generosity of the colonists, even after seven years of Stacker’s generosity, of Jake’s generosity in allowing her to share Stacker’s love, of Herc’s generosity with what little time he had between deployments, even of Chuck’s generosity, in his own way, with doing what had to be done in the moments she could not. 

She failed to save Raleigh’s brother, and now he is pouring her a drink. They sit beside the stones, Mako on one side of him and Tendo on the other, as the aurora flows overhead. 

“You got a brother?” Raleigh asks after they finish a round. 

“Two,” she says. “Want one?” 

He laughs, voiceless and quick. “Maybe later.” 

“Speaking of later,” says Tendo, and Mako nods, gets up and dusts off her trousers. Stacker and Herc know where she is, but they will still wait for her into the night without resentment, and they need all the sleep they can get.

“Thank you,” Raleigh Becket says, looking up at her, eyes bright but voice steady, “for helping me bury him.” Mako dips her head. 

A few days later he accepts Herc’s open invitation and stops by their Jaeger for dinner. Chuck is vocally unimpressed. After Raleigh leaves, Stacker considers Mako and says, “He seems nice.” 

Mako only smiles. 

\- - - 

Back on a slightly less lethal planet, Doctor Lightcap met with the Hansen-Pentecost-Mori family one month out from departure. “How’s the packing going?” she asked. 

Chuck raised his hand, even though these meetings were never that formal. “I’m twenty-five kilos under the personal possessions limit,” he declared. The margin was no small thing. Colonists had a strict high protein diet, so Chuck couldn’t have starved himself to offset his stuff if he wanted to, and he was still putting on muscle. Every weigh-in, he had to ditch something else from his bag. He was down to his bomber jacket, a photo of Mum, and Max’s leash and a small bag of kibble. “Which is great,” he went on, “because my dog weighs twenty-four.” 

Lightcap glanced up from her tablet, then from Chuck to Herc, and back again. “I’m sorry, Chuck. The only animals allowed onboard are livestock.” 

Chuck closed his mouth, and stayed that way for the remainder of the meeting. It wasn’t until Lightcap gathered her things and left that he turned to Herc. “You knew.” 

His old man wouldn’t look at him. “I was waiting for the right time,” he said softly. Just like Chuck was waiting until the last month, to make it harder for them to say no. He couldn’t say this was unexpected, but that didn’t make him any less angry, and Herc was right there. 

Jake piped up, always quick with a solution even when it wasn’t wanted. “My mum can take him.” Mako put her hand on Jake’s shoulder and Stacker steered them both out of the room. 

“Look,” Chuck said the moment the door closed behind them, “just because you don’t have anything keeping you on this planet doesn’t mean I don’t either, okay? I quite like my life.” 

Herc made that hangdog face and took a minute to answer. “If you want to stay, I’ll stay.” 

“Why bother? I’m eighteen now. You should go, be free.” 

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Herc scoffed, finally meeting his eyes. 

Yeah, of course not. “You sure bought into that Pentecost family rule, didn’t you.” 

“It’s a Hansen rule too,” Herc said. Chuck snorted. “And if you want to give up a future with blue skies and clean air and freedom, for a dog--” 

“Guilt,” Chuck said. “That’s slick.” 

“--then I will, too.” 

They stared each other down. Chuck was the first to look away. He grabbed his jacket and walked out. 

Three weeks later, he knelt by Max and waited for  Dominika Adeleye to finish holding her son and kissing the top of his head. “Look after him for me?” he asked her, when Jake pulled away after one last hug. Dominika nodded solemnly and took Max’s leash. 

Without the kibble, Chuck came in thirty-one kilos under the weight limit on launch day. 

Now, the  _ Eureka _ is leaving their doomed solar system in twenty-four hours, and their makeshift simulation is not going well. Chuck could stand never to hear Tendo tell his old man he’s dead again, but in order for that to happen, Herc needs to stop being mediocre. 

They’ve just wrapped up another fake explosion when Gottlieb radios in to report that the refit is complete, and the Jaeger is two hundred kilos under the target weight. 

Chuck looks to Mako. Mako looks to Jake. Jake takes off toward the cargo bay. 

“What are you doing, kids?” asks Herc, who can’t turn his head far in the suit, but has seen all this in the reflection. 

Chuck directs his answer to Stacker. “Look, he can’t steer and vent fuel at the same time. He needs a copilot.” 

Herc reaches up to rub his face, but the helmet is in the way, so instead he shuts his eyes and blows out a breath. Stacker regards him, then trades a glance with Tendo, and finally turns back to Chuck. “What do you weigh, Chuck?” 

As if he doesn’t have all their profiles memorized; as if the weight matters when Chuck has the second fastest cognitive recovery time in the entire colony. “Seventy nine kilos.” 

“One oh one with the suit,” Mako amends. Jake chooses that moment to return, dragging the suit in its bin. 

Stacker makes a show of considering, and Herc waits on his determination. Aren’t either of them tired of doing things for the sake of appearances? Aren’t they all past that by now? 

“So suit up,” Stacker says at last, as if that wasn’t the only possible course of action. 

So Chuck does, and Jake opens the flight deck doors, and Mako drops the suit pressure, and Chuck passes out, and comes to in time to vent the fuel when the heat gauge is well in the red at twenty seconds, and Tendo says they’re dead. 

“What?” Chuck snaps. 

“You gotta push it back to thirty,” Tendo tells him. 

Chuck shakes his head as best he can in the helmet. “Manual says twenty.” 

“Manual’s not always right.” 

He has a shit of a headache starting, and he’s still buckled into the copilot’s spot with a homemade girdle that’s going to nail his guts to the seat as soon as they go again. “Why don’t we get Doctor Gottlieb on the line--”

“Chuck.” His father’s voice cuts through, soft and weary though it is. “Try it at thirty.”

Chuck sets his jaw. Herc never read a manual in his life but yeah, sure. Nothing to lose. They start over. Chuck passes out and comes to with seconds to spare, and he vents at twenty-nine point five, and Stacker says, “Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve reached escape velocity. Let’s go again.”

They run the simulation five more times, and it’s not a fluke. 

So they do it for real, and their Jaeger explodes. 

\- - -

There’s a dinosaur in the camp, and its teeth are longer than Herc’s knife, and Chuck is behind him and Jake is behind Chuck, whispering “Help us help us help us” under his breath no matter how much Chuck shushes him. The past week has rendered Herc uncomfortably aware of the fragility of human life and the tenuousness of their foothold on this planet, and this creature just knocked over Gottlieb’s signal tower, and maybe if Stacker was here he’d have a better idea than standing in front of the kids with a knife.

Fortunately for all of them, Mako has a better idea. She comes out of the Jaeger with the Masao Mori blade she brought with her, a slender kilogram of steel folded and shaped to a horizon curve and a micron-sharp edge, and she takes a ready stance between Herc and the creature, and she says something in Japanese.

“Help us help us help us help us,” Jake says, rising in pitch, and Herc is on the verge of prayer too because if anything happens to the boy or Mako he doesn’t know how he’ll ever look Stacker in the eye again.

The monster rushes at Mako and she brings the sword down. It’s a clean strike, impossibly fast.

Somehow the creature is faster. It twists and catches the blade in its strange split jaws, and though the steel lodges deep in the bone, the thing doesn’t let go. It thrashes the way Max used to shake his chew toys, and Mako strains to keep her grip. The creature shrieks around the blade.

The cry is answered.

A second creature descends the ridge through the tents, and Mako looks back at Herc, terrified but not letting go of the sword. Herc doesn’t make it a step before the creature charges, and a blue and gold robot intercepts it a meter away from Mako and hurls it to the ground. The first beast opens its jaws and Mako tears the sword out, holds it tip-down behind her as she sprints to Jake and the Hansens, and both creatures turn on Danger and start to pummel it.

Herc ushers the kids back but Jake slips around him, even as Mako grabs at his jacket. Jake has the sword and he throws it, a gorgeous overhand arc, and the wrapped hilt lands in Danger’s hand, and the robot’s faceplate glows red.

By the time it’s finished, there’s hardly anything left for the Jessops to dissect.

As the rest of the colonists emerge from their feeble hiding places, the kids push past Herc, Jake first and then Mako and then Chuck trying to get in front of Mako. Jake puts out his hand and the robot stills, reconfigures itself, two arms instead of four, grasping hands instead of plasma cannons, blue lights in its domed face. It turns to Mako, shielded behind Chuck, and presents the sword hilt-first. She moves forward to take it, and then she hesitates for a second, and bows. Danger looks to Jake, and back to Mako, and it bends at the waist.

Some choked, pathetic sound escapes Herc, and he realizes there are tears running down his face. He has no idea how he ended up with these three impossibly fierce, impossibly intelligent children.

He tells Chuck as much later, when they’re hurtling through orbit on a broken piece of their Jaeger. His kid huddles by the handrail, eyes tightly shut against the sting of defogging agent, and Herc doesn’t have a monitor for his vitals but he thinks maybe Chuck is panicking, and he can’t exactly hold that against him under the circumstances.

“I’m not the person who should be doing this,” he says as he tries wire against wire, over and over. “Jake could sort it out. He’s smarter than I am. Mako would come up with something completely different. I can’t believe… She’s not mine and she’s not Stacker’s, but look how fearless and strong she turned out. Maybe I just wish I was more like her.” Truth be told, he’s felt out of his depth since they landed, felt like everything he learned in the military wasn’t applicable here and he’s in the way more than he helps. 

Over the radio he hears Chuck exhale through his nose. 

“Sometimes I think I don’t give you enough credit for how hard you try,” Herc goes on. “I know we haven’t gotten to talk much, lately, that it… it felt like there was nothing to talk about. I just don’t want to regret all the things I never said.”

“Don’t,” says Chuck, suddenly at his side. Through the glare on his helmet, Herc can see tears. “You don’t need to. I know ‘em all.” He takes the gold wire from Herc’s hand and matches it to green, and what remains of the fuel pump burns through the fumes in the conduits, just long enough.

“I’m so glad I’m here with you,” Herc says, and hugs aren’t really a thing he can do around the suits, but he gives Chuck’s helmet a solid pat. 

“Damn it, Dad,” Chuck says as more of the defogger flakes into his face. 

“This is Jaeger Seven,” says Stacker’s voice in Herc’s earpiece. “We seem to be picking up something hot.” 

Herc’s breath gusts out all at once and fogs his faceplate. “Get on with it then,” he says.

“Copy that,” says Stacks, and the Jaeger closes range.

\- - -

Mako and Chuck are pounding on the Chariot’s door, because Jake isn’t in there with them. When he gets his helmet on, he can’t hear the pounding, just their shouts over the radio. He crouches by the Chariot’s driver side wheel, watching as something tears the Jaeger’s ramp open.

It wouldn’t be the same if he waited this out in the Chariot. Danger responds better when he can see Jake, follow his motion. To do this, they have to be together. And what good is protecting Jake his whole life, if he can’t grow up to protect them?

Danger waits beside him now. The garage depressurizes, and loose crates fly out of the expanding gap in the ramp, past a sharp and sinuous shape with four arms and red lights for a face.

It’s bigger than Danger, and Jake wonders at that for a moment, whether they’re organic after all, whether size is a function of rank in whatever they have for a society. Bigger isn’t always better, though.

Jake makes a fist, and plants it in his palm. Danger straightens to his full height, and steps forward. Jake’s Japanese is patchy at best, but he heard what Mako said that night in the camp with her sword flashing. “For my family,” he tells Danger.

“Get away from my kids,” says Jake’s father, and before Danger can attack, the maintenance armature hits the bigger robot at full speed.

While it’s still reeling, Herc seconds the motion by putting a harpoon through the thing’s chest. The force is enough to knock it nearly to the edge of the ramp, but it recovers too quickly, grasps the tether cable, and yanks hard. Herc collides with the bulkhead before he lets go of the harpoon gun. The thing aims one glowing pincer hand at Danger, and one at the Chariot.

Danger turns his head toward Jake one last time, and shoulders the robot out into space.

He watches them grapple and turn end over end, until Mako fires the Chariot’s magnetic winch at the ramp and cranks it back into place. The garage fills with air again. Jake feels his father’s hand settle on his shoulder. Stacker says his name.

He turns and wraps his arms around Stacker’s waist. Seconds later the Chariot opens and Mako is there too, clinging to both of them. “Okay,” says Stacker, releasing Jake’s helmet so he can kiss the top of his head. “Okay,” he says again. “It’s done.”

Jaeger Seven shifts like someone just gunned the engine, but they’re out of fuel. On the other side of the garage Chuck stops in the midst of helping his father back up, and says, “What the hell was that?”

\- - -

On the rare occasions he has time to sleep and he needs to quiet the unending list of worries in his mind, Stacker Pentecost pictures a deck of cards, wrapped in a rubber band, floating gently over the table in the hub.

That was before their Jaeger fell to a planet they never bothered to name, but it was also before Tendo joined them with his chicken, and before Raleigh walked to Jaeger Seven with his bag over his shoulder as the other colonists departed for the  _ Eureka _ . So Stacker imagines them at the table too, with the rest of his family, helmets on and gravity off. Nowhere to be, no one in mortal peril.

He’s always been comfortable in freefall. Always been able to see from a distance how things will land, until now.

Herc snores beside him, and Stacker reaches over to nudge his shoulder so he’ll turn on his side. As he rolls, Herc grabs his wrist reflexively, strong and warm. Stacker shifts to get more comfortable without breaking Herc’s grasp.

Mako and Chuck have second watch on the bridge, scanning the strange binary system where they have been transported. They’ll wake Stacker in four hours--sooner if something goes wrong, like it always does. The rest of Jaeger Seven sleeps.

He ungrounds himself again, imagines the slight rotation of the cards, each of them passing the deck along when their turn ended.

There is a place, maybe not Alpha Centauri but someplace, where they can land and build a life. They’re going to find it.


End file.
